Kanan Pujara

ORCID Identifier(s)

0000-0002-6871-4726

Graduation Semester and Year

2015

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering

Department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

First Advisor

Dereje Agonafer

Second Advisor

Prabjit Singh

Third Advisor

Haji-Sheikh Abdolhossein

Abstract

Data center consume a significant amount of energy for the continuous air-conditioning of the servers with high internal heat loads and to maintain the indoor temperatures within recommended operating levels as recommended by ASHRAE. As an alternate source to air-conditioning, air-side economizers are used to reduce power consumption. However, there is a reluctance in using this technique due to undetermined equipment reliability by introducing outside air pollutants which over time could cause failures. There is a need to know the degree of reliability degradation when the equipment is operated, outside the recommended range, in the allowable temperature-humidity range in geographies with high levels of gaseous and particulate contamination. There are many modes of hardware failure under harsh temperature-humidity conditions. This work restricts itself to the effect of temperature and humidity on corrosion-related hardware failures, in sulfur-bearing gaseous contaminated environments, by studying copper and silver corrosion rates as a function of temperature and humidity. An ASHRAE survey of data centers has shown that there is a strong relationship of corrosion-related hardware failure frequency to copper and silver corrosion rates under various temperature and relative humidity ranges. The gaseous contamination is provided in the form of approximately 70 ppb free sulpur in a flowers of sulpur (FOS) chamber maintained at 30?C constant temperature. The humidity in the FOS chamber is maintained at various levels by using saturated salt solutions and the thin film temperature is maintained at various levels between 30 and 50?C by the joule heating of the films. The corrosion rates of copper and silver, in a 30?C ambient with ~70 ppb free sulfur, are plotted in the upper right corner of the ASHRAE A1-A4 allowable temperature-humidity ranges. For the first time, corrosion data are provided on the psychrometric chart in a form convenient for obtaining the x-factors for temperature and humidity for corrosion-related hardware failures. This work does not address the role of particulate contamination

Keywords

ASHRAE, Corrosion, Gaseous contamination, Sulphur, Hardware failures

Disciplines

Aerospace Engineering | Engineering | Mechanical Engineering

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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